Hostage received gifts from captors - report

June 14 2005 at 01:28PM

By Marc Burleigh Paris - Florence Aubenas, the French journalist released in Iraq last weekend after more than five months in captivity, received perfume and rings from her captors as goodbye presents, reports said on Tuesday. The details were part of Aubenas's first account of what she experienced after she and her Iraqi interpreter, Hussein Hanun, were seized in Baghdad on January 5. She was to give more information later on Tuesday at a media conference in the Paris offices of a newspaper. 'They served us tea like you would guests' Aubenas said that the day of their release, she and Hanun were ordered out of the basement where they were being kept with the barked order, "Number 5 and number 6, toilet." At the top of the stairs, a guard told them: "Today, Paris." The two were then led into a room where they were told to dress in traditional Arab wear and their personal effects - jewellery and watches, Aubenas's handbag with her identity papers and money - were handed to them in plastic bags. "A guard then told me: 'We have prepared some gifts for you.' They gave me two rings and a bottle of perfume," Aubenas said. For the first time since their capture, the two were allowed to sit on chairs. "They served us tea like you would guests and then roast chicken," she said. Hours later, after being put blindfolded in a car, then a van, the two were handed over to French intelligence officers, one of whom told them as they were quickly bundled into a car with diplomatic plates: "It's over, it's over." French defence minister Michele Alliot-Mariesaid on Tuesday that the operation was "long, difficult and dangerous" and involved more than 100 people. "It was the French services and especially the people in the (DGSE foreign intelligence agency) action service who recovered our hostages, in conditions that were very dangerous," she said. She added that the United States, which heads up the military occupation of Iraq, did not interfere in the operation, which relied on communicating with the hostage-takers through "reliable intermediaries". Aubenas herself only knew "just a part of what happened", Alliot-Marie said, explaining that much of the operation would remain secret "in case events like this happen again". Suspicion that France paid a ransom to free the hostages continued unabated on Tuesday despite a vehement denial from the government. The head of Paris's media rights group Reporters Without Borders, Robert Menard, said he did not believe former foreign minister Michel Barnier, who was in charge of the negotiations until being replaced in his portfolio last month, when he said no ransom was given. "Everybody knows that's not true," he said late on Monday. "I don't know of any hostage-taking situation in which a ransom wasn't paid." Authorities had a duty to deny ransom payments to prevent citizens from becoming seen as easy pickings, he said, but added: "Of course there was an exchange, otherwise they (Aubenas and Hanun) wouldn't be here." French opposition lawmakers have called for a parliamentary commission to look into the government's negotiations with the hostage-takers, whom authorities have not identified. - Sapa-AFP RSS Feeds  |  Free IOL Headlines  |  Newsletters  |  IOL on your phone © 2005 Independent Online. All rights strictly reserved. Independent Online is a wholly owned subsidiary of Independent News & Media. Reliance on the information this site contains is at your own risk. Please read our Terms and Conditions of Use and Privacy Policy. Write to feedback. Tel: +27 21 481 6200, Fax: +27 21 481 6292 Click here for more information on IOL